An ongoing project bridging literature and river sports

We were paddling with a few friends, somewhere in the south of Sweden, in those fragile early days of spring, when winter is still holding on with cold fingers. Out of nowhere, I turned to my friend Jacob and asked him, very seriously, if he wanted to hear a poem.

He said yes. – He didn’t know what adventure he was going into.

So there I was, drifting between two strokes, reciting Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 to a kayak, a river, and a slightly puzzled audience. The next day, Jacob filmed what would become our very first river poem.

Reciting poetry outdoors today probably sounds hopelessly outdated — a little old-fashioned, and, let’s be honest, mildly pretentious. 

But why is it, really? 

Why should we always look and sound like high-performance athletes when all we actually want is to love nature, to be moved by it, and to share its quiet, unreasonable beauty?

Our first poem, Sonnet 18, by William Shakespeare (1564-1616, from Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom), is a love poem about beauty that does not fade — about memory, time, and the quiet promise of immortality through words. A poem written for someone we love… or, in our case, for something we love just as deeply: the river.

Then one year later we were back at it…

Chosen for our second poem, Asphodel by William Carlos Williams (1883–1963, from Rutherford, New Jersey) is a quiet celebration of memory and the senses — of smells, textures and fragile feelings. And that is exactly why it belongs on a river: every stretch of water stays with us not only in images, but in sound, breath, cold spray on the skin — in the full memory of the body.

And another year later…

Our third poem, Ma Bohème, by Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891, from Charleville, France), speaks of wandering lightly — alone on the road, with almost nothing, and everything that truly matters — a feeling every kayaker knows when simple gear, an open river and a free day are more than enough.

Real adventurers have dirty clothes, a goggle tan burned into their faces, and appear in videos proudly subtitled [upbeat music playing], accompanied by a thunderous voice-over that wildly overuses words like life and death. They give interviews. They talk about their achievements as if it were a casual stroll in the park — conveniently making you feel like a small piece of dog turd for having failed, in your entire existence, to accomplish even a fraction of what they apparently did yesterday afternoon.

I like taking a shower every day. And laundry day genuinely feels like Christmas to me. I also like quiet folk songs and classical music.

Real adventurers always travel with a professional film crew and outrageously expensive camera gear. They drink alarming quantities of energy drinks. They speak loudly. They carry their sunglasses on top of their heads. They always look as if they’ve just had the best night’s sleep of their lives. They smile a lot. And then, very often, they cry on camera — because they have feelings too.

I have my friend Jacob, who once bought a vintage Soviet lens for his camera at a flea market. And I like a good cup of evening tea.

Oh — and real adventurers usually come from a long and glorious bloodline of adventurers. They were born in the mountains. Their parents took them to the top of Mount Everest to play in the snow right after picking them up from kindergarten.

I was raised in my parents’ library. Destined to become a bookworm. A nerd. And I am a proud nerdy bookworm. The only real tragedy is that my eyesight is still far too good for glasses — which would complete the look perfectly.

We are not chasing big achievements or polished performance — we are choosing to show something different, and to stay true to who we are.

In a world of fast, disposable content, we believe a little slowness — and a little depth — still has its place.

Simple, imperfect, and entirely our own way.

River Poetry is an ongoing project, there will be more of these videos, but don’t expect big productions, great acting, or anything even remotely professional.

What you’ll get instead is a small, very DIY project between friends — people who share the same love for rivers, and a carefully (and very subjectively) curated selection of poems from my own shelves and my own taste.

So far, we’ve wandered through Shakespeare, William Carlos Williams and Arthur Rimbaud. And in the future, you can expect a much wider and more diverse range of voices and poems to drift into the flow with us.

Stay tuned —

and, as always, hope for the best.

urbanpackrafter.com

Featured photo courtesy of Marina Rockstroh-Hovsveen on Sjoa, Norway.

All illustrations by the author.

Jacob and I would like to thank Aquabound for their support.